[ Scholarships ]

SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION & LINKS

The sites listed below are intended for information only.  Some of the sites are commercial ones, designed to sell various types of materials and services.

Carrollton-Farmers Branch does not endorse any of the sites.

WATCH OUT FOR SCHOLARSHIP SCAMS!

Today many sites you find on the Internet provide students and families with legitimate help in finding scholarships, but BE AWARE that some scholarship services can be scams.

The Federal Trade Commission names six signs that may signal problems with the scholarship services:

"Guaranteed" scholarships;
Services that promise to do all the work;
Scholarships that cost money;
Promises that information is unavailable anywhere else;
Notice of being a finalist in a competition you never entered; and
Services that request a credit card or checking account number in advance.

To check out a scholarship service's credentials, call the National Fraud Information Center at 1-800-876-7060.

 Government sites

Federal

	U.S. Department of Education: Financial Aid for Students Home Page is the one-stop shop for federal student loan programs. The site has booklets available online or to be ordered by mail, and lots of information on deadlines, eligibility and applications.
	Free Application for Federal Student Aid is part of the U.S. Department of Education Web site. Users can fill out and submit a FAFSA, the first step in the financial aid process.

State

	The Financial Aid Resource category at Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has links to Texas-based financial aid information, U.S. Department of Education sites and nonprofit financial aid and student-related associations.
	Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. is a public nonprofit corporation that administers the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) in Texas. It provides information on Texas colleges, scholarship and grant information and an online application process.

U.S. military sites

The highly competitive U.S. military service academies offer free federally funded education to the best and the brightest: U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and U.S. Naval Academy.

Commercial and nonprofit sites

	Sallie Mae, the Student Loan Marketing Association, is a financial services company that claims to currently fund about 40 percent of all insured student loans. The College Aid Sources for Higher Education (CASHE) at Sallie Mae's online scholarship service lists sources of college funding, including scholarships, fellowships, grants, work-study programs, loans, tuition waivers, internships and competitions.
	The College Board the folks who brought you the SAT, a Web site where you can search for financial aid and scholarships, research school choices and even apply online directly for admission to colleges.
	ExPan: Based on the College Board Scholarship Handbook, this search engine locates scholarships, loans, internships and other financial aid offers from a database of 3,400 programs.
	FastWEB: This financial aid tool features a scholarship search database, cost calculator and offers a FastWeb mailbox that is updated daily with scholarship news and information.
	FinAid: Scholarship eligibility information, financial aid forms, ROTC funds and a financial aid to-do list are included on this site.
	Kaplan Educational Centers best known for SAT and ACT prep courses, has a Web site that features financial aid applications and a lesson on how to spot scholarship scams.
	The Mach 25 database is part of the CollegeNET system that allows applicants to complete, file and pay for college admissions over the Internet. It contains more than 600,000 scholarship offers totaling $1.6 billion.
	Peterson's: This site, home page of the publisher of the widely used Peterson's financial aid books, has an 850,000-scholarship database.
	Scholarship Resource Network Express is a search engine and database of scholarships and other financial aid.